Deadline: October 05, 2025
The Uganda Climate Innovation Fund (UCIF) provides support to innovators and entrepreneurs to pilot, incubate, and accelerate new climate-smart products and services that enhance sustainability and climate resilience in Uganda’s agriculture sector.
Focus Areas/Objectives/Priorities/Themes: Innovation and technology-based solutions to drive transformative changes to increase sustainability and climate resilience of the Ugandan agriculture sector promoting climate resilience, mitigation, and sustainable land management, supporting genuinely new ideas to tackle challenges in agriculture, developing goods or services that are new or significantly improved, improved production or delivery methods, new marketing methods, new organisational methods in business practices, supporting pre-proof-of-concept innovations with potential for long-term transformational change, collaboration with CSJ lead implementer Palladium, and its partners Swisscontact, Stanbic or CABI, and an additional implementing partner
The UCIF aims to address the high costs and risks associated with early-stage innovation by providing financial and technical support to potential pioneers. Seed funding is offered through grants ranging from £10,000 to £200,000, enabling innovators to advance their ideas from concept to market readiness. Technical assistance is provided in partnership with the Stanbic Business Incubator and includes boot camps, training workshops, mentorship, peer-to-peer learning, and networking opportunities.
Potential pioneers also receive pitch preparation support, helping them effectively communicate their innovations to investors and stakeholders. The UCIF facilitates matchmaking and exposure at national, regional, and international events, while also linking innovators to growth capital opportunities, including grants, equity, and debt. Connections to local innovation hubs are provided where appropriate to enable design, prototyping, and testing of solutions.
Eligibility for UCIF support is broad, welcoming applications from individuals, students, farmers, academics, refugees, for-profit companies, joint ventures, social enterprises, farmer organisations, business associations, accelerators, incubators, financial institutions, educational or training organisations, and women-owned or refugee-owned businesses. Both startups and established businesses, whether registered or not, can apply, with no requirement for operational history or financial documentation.
Ineligible applications include those seeking funding for personal benefit only, retroactive funding, debt retirement, reserves, endowments, individuals or organisations with criminal convictions, serious contractual breaches, discrimination, political affiliations, or government entities.
Eligible costs include professional fees and technical assistance, travel, lab testing, prototyping, capital equipment, consumables, graphic and marketing materials, packaging, sales and marketing costs, certification and audit expenses, intellectual property rights, raw materials, rental of specialized equipment or facilities, and innovation hub services. Ineligible costs include real estate, vehicles, taxes, bank charges, lost funds, contingency premiums, pre-agreement costs, and expenditures unrelated to the project’s objectives.
The geographical scope of the fund is within specific sub-regions of Uganda, and innovations must be trialled in one or more of these locations to qualify. The UCIF provides a structured pathway for innovators to develop, test, and scale solutions that contribute to Uganda’s climate resilience and sustainable agricultural practices.
For more information, visit CSJ.
